At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, visitors will have the chance to view nine artefacts that belong to the ancient Greek colony of Apollonia Pontica, now known as Sozopol on the Black Sea. The items were sourced from Bulgaria’s Burgas and Sozopol museums and will be on display in the exhibition titled Across Wine‑Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece, which opens on December 20 this year and runs until April 11, 2027.
Burgas and Sozopol will contribute seven and two items respectively. The municipal Cultural Institute Museum Centre in Sozopol supplies seven ceramic vessels linked to the city’s ancient religious practices, while the Regional History Museum in Burgas is sending two emblematic stone sculptures.
The Burgas pair includes a relief of the goddess Cybele that dates to the first half of the fifth century BC and was discovered in the waters of Sozopol Harbour. The second, a young man in the form of a kouros, is dated to the sixth or early fifth century BC and is the oldest marble statue held in Bulgarian museums. The two were dispatched to New York on November 12; the preparation team described a three‑day pack‑and‑ship operation that involved specialist packing, custom crates and loading ramps for a truck.
"The Black Sea is represented in the exhibition exclusively through Apollonia Pontica, with artefacts from the collections of the museums in Burgas and Sozopol," the Sozopol Museum Director Dimitar Nedev told BTA. Nedev said the representation is a significant acknowledgment of the region’s archaeological heritage and of the ancient city’s role in cultural contacts between the Greek world and peoples along the western Black Sea coast.
An exhibition director noted that the show will assemble more than 180 works from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, western Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Sardinia and the Apennine Peninsula. The collection includes items drawn from some of the world’s major museums, such as the Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums, the National Archaeological Museums in Athens and Taranto, the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade, the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion in Crete, the Archaeological Museum of Samos, the Archaeological Museum of Córdoba and the Albacete Museum in Spain.
The seven Sozopol artefacts are still en route. They comprise a set of ceramic vessels that scholars believe were connected with the ancient city’s religious rites. Their arrival in the United States is anticipated shortly before the New York exhibition opens.
The exhibition will be a major venue for dialogue between contemporary observers and the ancient cultures that once bridged the Black Sea and the wider Mediterranean. It will offer a glimpse into the artistic achievements that arose from regional exchanges across the hungry waters of the ancient world.
